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FEW OF US PAY MUCH ATTENTION TO THE OVER-THE-TOP shenanigans of Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, a close friend of President Barack Obama, or to those of the Massachusetts State Legislature. But the collective disinterest will end after Labor Day when the legislature's overwhelming Democratic majority, responding to Patrick's urging, picks a temporary replacement for Sen. Ted Kennedy to help Obama ram his ambitious agenda through Congress.

Beacon Hill is a hotbed of delicious scandal. The national press will home in on the tawdry operation, presenting Democrats in Washington with a Category Five public-relations problem. The president, the Senate and Massachusetts political corruption all will be bound up in one sound bite. Journalists will remind us of the fiasco that ensued when Illinois Democrats hastily appointed Roland Burris to fill Obama's U.S. Senate seat. Burris faces a Senate ethics investigation for failing to disclose information about his relationship with former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who was indicted on federal corruption charges. This sort of publicity likely will harm Obama's already wobbly popularity numbers.

Save your tears: The negative will be a positive for the stock market. Congress is less likely to support a weak president than a strong one. His deficit-widening proposals will be avoided like a carrier of swine flu.

Massachusetts is neck-and-neck with New Jersey in the political-corruption derby. Democratic House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi was indicted for alleged influence peddling in January and resigned. He is the third consecutive House speaker to be indicted. State Sen. Dianne Wilkerson was busted last October after investigators allegedly watched her stuff bribe money into her brassiere -- providing the only real evidence of inflation in two years. Gov. Patrick is under fire for appointing political cronies to high-paying posts despite a campaign pledge to end "politics as usual." If that phrase sounds familiar, it's because Obama's campaign advisor David Axelrod also advised Patrick's gubernatorial campaign.

Patrick's popularity, like Obama's, is plunging. He's running for a second term in 2010, but a Boston Globe poll this summer found that only 23% of the voters trust Patrick's handling of the state's economic problems. A poll of 400 likely voters by the Rappaport Center for Law and Public Service at Suffolk University Law School in Boston found that 47% of them believe that ethics have worsened in state government over the past 10 years. Asked to rate the level of ethics, 2% said they were excellent; 10% said they were good; 49%, fair; and 40% said they were poor.

This is extraordinary. Massachusetts voters are strongly Democratic and historically very forgiving. The legislature has 179 Democrats and 21 Republicans. Sen. Ted Kennedy kept being reelected despite his legendary foibles, and Rep. Barney Frank miraculously survived a scandal involving a male prostitute.

This time is different. The frightened legislature, hoping to defuse public anger, recently passed a tough ethics law. Too late. As an unforeseen consequence of Kennedy's passing, that anger is going prime time, with national repercussions for the Obama administration. That's something for the president to ponder as he vacations on Martha's Vineyard this week.